The theory of the labour aristocracy argues that opportunism in the working
class has a material basis. Class-collaborationist politics express the
interests of a relatively privileged stratum of workers supported in their
benefits by monopoly superprofits. Karl Marx and, especially, Frederick
Engels first developed this theory. It is most closely associated with
V.I. Lenin, however, for whom it became "the pivot of the
tactics in the labour movement that are dictated by the objective conditions
of the imperialist era".1

This article, the third of four,2 continues to discuss Lenin's
development of the theory and the controversies that surround it. It considers
the stratum's composition and the relationship of the labour aristocracy
to the labour bureaucracy and to the rest of the class. It also discusses
the political strategy and tactics Lenin proposed to counter the stratum's
opportunist influence in the working-class movement. The final article
in the series will apply the theory of the labour aristocracy to an understanding
of the political history of the Australian working class.

Dimensions of the composition of the labour
aristocracy

The conditions of monopoly capitalism affect the entire working class,
not just the labour aristocracy. In the countries where monopoly superprofits
are accumulated, profit rates are raised, especially for the monopoly
firms. The pressures of capitalist competition are dulled. In turn, workers
are spared the full brunt of efforts to minimise wages and employment.

Broader sections of the working class than the labour aristocracy also
benefit from democratic forms in bourgeois political life and related
social reforms in state employment, social security and state provision
of goods and services. The historical extension of these has partly been
a response to the cost to the bourgeoisie of failures to do so.3

Indeed, Lenin wrote that in the mechanics of political democracy, "it
is impossible to gain the following of the masses without a widely
ramified, systematically managed, well-equipped system of flattery, lies,
fraud, juggling with fashionable and popular catchwords". Therefore
there will be "all manner of reforms and blessings to the workers
right and left—as long as they renounce the revolutionary struggle
for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie".4

Because some relative privileges for workers supported by monopoly superprofits
extend to substantial parts of the working class in the industrially advanced
capitalist countries, Tony Cliff, and also M.C. Howard and J.E. King,
criticised the view that the opportunist trend in working-class politics
springs from the interest in such privileges of a stratum of workers differentiated
from the mass of the working class.5 Tom O'Lincoln, following
Cliff, denied the existence of such a stratum: "Wage gains and other
concessions granted to one section of the class tend to flow on to others,
[negating] any tendency to elevate one section into an `aristocracy'."6
This criticism of the theory of the labour aristocracy does not recognise
that the extension of benefits has only partial effects on the formation
of the social base for opportunism.

The extension of benefits moderates the division between the labour aristocracy
and the rest of the working class in each country and reinforces the stratum's
numbers and influence. Lenin observed: "To a certain degree
the workers of the oppressor nations are partners of their own
bourgeoisie in plundering the workers (and the mass of the population)
of the oppressed nations; politically … compared with the
workers of the oppressed nations, they occupy a privileged position
in many spheres of political life; ideologically … they are
taught, at school and in life, disdain and contempt for the workers of
the oppressed nations".7 On these bases, notions about
collaborative class relations and effective working-class politics within
bourgeois democracy, and "national superiority", can develop
to varying degrees among all sections of the working class and tend to
align them with the opportunist trend.8

The division of workers globally is accentuated, however. Max Elbaum
and Robert Seltzer pointed out, "relative to the masses in the colonies
and semi-colonies, the entire working class in the advanced capitalist
countries possesses political, economic and cultural advantages".9

Also, the labour aristocracy still receives a greater share of
the concessions of monopolising capitals within a stratified working class.
The limited gains of broader sections of a working class are part of a
"steady gradation in benefits" that also creates a section "which
by virtue of its privileged position vis-à-vis the rest
of the working class … is most susceptible to opportunist political
lines".10 Examples of relatively privileged strata within
national working classes previously discussed—in England in the nineteenth
century, in Germany before the first world war and in the us at the turn
of the century and after the second world war—show that the tendency
towards the formation of such strata has not been negated by the extension
of some benefits for workers.

Elbaum and Seltzer argued that the theory of the labour aristocracy still
expects a "pronounced correlation between the extent of privilege
and opportunist politics", spontaneously based in the distinct interest
of the labour aristocracy in maintaining its privileged position, but
does not assume an automatic relationship of the two, since broader political
experience and class consciousness could produce a politics among labour
aristocrats expressing their class interest as proletarians. It will,
therefore, be fruitless to attempt to reduce the labour aristocracy to
an occupational profile, or otherwise draw an exact dividing line between
the stratum and the rest of the class or "locate sociologically that
point when quantity (of privilege) turns into quality".11

Elbaum and Seltzer continued, however, by stating that their concern
was "not primarily with privilege, but politics", and they identified
"the influence of the labour aristocracy through political practice
rather than income levels".12 This apparently contradicts
any attempt to characterise the composition of the stratum socially.
Yet Lenin identified it with the "upper strata of the working class",
and Engels, Lenin and Elbaum and Seltzer themselves discussed the inclusion
of various groupings of workers in it—unionised skilled workers,
workers in "privileged" branches of industry, office employees,
producers of luxury goods or, more extensively, the bulk of organised
workers.13

Historically, the stratification of the working class places uppermost
those workers who, as a result of their position within capitalist production
and social life, including, perhaps, their organisation, have the greatest
economic and political leverage. Elbaum and Seltzer argued that the problem
for the theory of the labour aristocracy is to understand the category
"labour aristocracy", the objective social grouping of those
sections of the working class that are the main beneficiaries of bribery
from monopoly superprofits, in its component parts in each historical
period of a country, without obscuring its unity.14

The particularity of the stratification between the labour aristocracy
and the rest of the working class is its link to monopoly superprofits
through the course of the latter's development. This determines the capacity
for and desirability of bribery of sections of the working class through
varied concessions that "allow a section of the proletariat to struggle
with capital for its own sectoral interests on more favourable grounds".
In relation to more prosperous and powerful monopolising capitals, the
labour aristocracy can include broader sections of the working class,
but the stratum will narrow if the capitals that support its bribery are
crisis-ridden.15 In 1926, for example,
Leon Trotsky contrasted Britain, where "the danger is not that the
bourgeoisie will once more pacify the proletariat, nor that an epoch of
Liberal-Labor politics will open up before the trade unions", with
the US, which had "monopolised for itself the possibility of a privileged
position for wide circles of the proletariat".16

Which sections of the working class are promoted by bribery to relative
privilege, however, is historically conditioned by intersections of the
aristocratic stratification with other stratifications, such as those
around skill, employment, organisation, regional differences and national,
gender, racial and religious oppression. The bribe is drawn towards those
parts of the working class that are in a strategic position in the class
struggle, partly as a consequence of these other stratifications. It moves
according to changes in the division of labour and in the social relations
within and between classes. Thus the social category of the labour aristocracy
both follows the development of the upper strata of the working class
and "seiz[es] upon previously existing stratifications within the
proletariat, enveloping them, incorporating them … qualitatively
transform[ing] the various advantages and protections of the already existing
upper strata, creating a labour aristocracy, which is reflected politically
in the cohering of various opportunist tendencies into a mature, all-sided
… trend".17

Skilled workers in the labour aristocracy

The labour aristocracy has frequently been equated with skilled workers
and/or craft unionists, leading to a questioning of the relevance of the
theory because the proportion of and the degree of differentiation of
these workers within the working class has declined. The equation collapses
two different categories of analysis, however. The basis of determination
of the category of skilled workers is not the labour aristocracy's bribe,
but the production process and its division of workers' productive activity—again,
historically, intersecting with other social phenomena, such as women's
oppression. The two categories do not inevitably coincide.18

Elbaum and Seltzer referred to the historical position, nevertheless,
of skilled workers, especially unionised ones, as "the most stable
core of the labour aristocracy" and as an archetypal example of the
transformation of a working-class stratification through bribery into
"a division of profound political significance for the working class
movement". The stratum of skilled workers is based on the favourable
differentiation of their wages because of the higher value of their labour-power
and their relative advantage in struggles with capital because of the
small proportion of other workers with their specific skills, and their
immediate interest in further restricting competition for their jobs by
limiting training or other measures, including exclusion on the basis
of other oppressions. This stratification leads to spontaneous organisation
of skilled workers, which protects them to the exclusion or even at the
expense of other strata of the working class, and, often, aloofness, suspicion
and even hostility among skilled workers to the mass of their fellow workers.
In the class struggle, however, skilled workers, being better placed to
engage in collective action and, therefore, generally, a relatively experienced
and organised stratum of the working class, have disproportionately greater
influence in the movement and the possibility of overcoming exclusiveness
through their experience where this lays the basis for a political class
consciousness. The sustained concession by monopolising capitals of some
benefits to the skilled workers needed instead to consolidate an alliance
with capital through an aristocratic stratification of the working class.19

The transformation of skilled workers into the core of the labour aristocracy
is accompanied by a development of trade union politics (workers striving
to alleviate their condition as wage-labourers subject to capital, but
not to abolish that condition20)—not necessarily nor exclusively
practised by the craft unions—into opportunist politics.21
Recognising an inevitable relative backwardness—"a certain craft
narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non-political, a certain inertness,
etc."—in the trade unions (they are, he said, also "a tremendous
step forward … to the rudiments of class organisation"),
Lenin contrasted this, "in countries more advanced than Russia",
with a "certain reactionism" that had "acquired a much
firmer footing in the trade unions … the craft-union, narrow-minded,
selfish, case-hardened, covetous, and petty-bourgeois `labour aristocracy',
imperialist-minded, and imperialist-corrupted".22
Elbaum and Seltzer noted the example of the craft unions in the United
States, which in 1881 had formed the American Federation of Labor as a
militant organisation: first, the AFL moved to conservative economic positions
and open hostility towards socialism; then, after 1895, when monopoly
capitalism was consolidated in the US, black workers were purged from
the skilled trades and the AFL engaged in conscious, systematic class
collaboration through support for colonial wars of the US and the participation
of its leadership in civic organisations dominated by the monopoly bourgeoisie.23

The bureaucratisation of the labour apparatus
and opportunism

The significance of the theory of the labour aristocracy as an explanation
of opportunism is its identification of a relatively privileged stratum
in the working class as a social basis within the working class
for class-collaborationist politics. The theory does not propose that
the labour aristocracy is isolated as the cause of opportunism in the
labour movement, however. It argues, for example, that the tendency to
bureaucratisation in the apparatus of the labour movement creates a further
source of opportunism, the labour bureaucracy, which is a caste of elected
or appointed functionaries of the movement's organisations who are propagandists
and agitators for opportunism.

The conditions of workers' lives under capitalism restrict their participation
in the democratic control of their organisations. Therefore, as workers'
organisations grew and increased their activity, centralisation of their
leadership and administration through functionaries was needed to give
the masses the possibility of acting in an organised manner. These officials,
who then embodied the organisations and might alone express the united
will of their members, were, however, also to some extent divorced from
the workers and subject to a tendency to corruption and a potential to
betray the workers' interests.24

Yet the labour movement apparatus cannot be equated with the labour bureaucracy.
The impulse to corruption and class collaboration arising from the nature
of the apparatus is a basis for conflict between it and the ranks of the
workers' organisations pursuing their historical class interests. Moreover,
the bourgeoisie exposes officials' promotion of their own welfare and
use of undemocratic methods to maintain control if doing so will encourage
workers to oppose their own organisation.25

However, when monopoly superprofits sustain not only the benefits of
the labour aristocracy but also the corruption of labour movement functionaries,26
the latter's interests can coincide with the stratum's, ostensibly losing
their corrupt character.27 The power of the corrupted officials
derives from this unity and, with its persistence, they are transformed
into a labour bureaucracy.28

Elbaum and Seltzer discussed the relationship between the labour bureaucracy
and the labour aristocracy:

As a political trend, then, opportunism includes leadership
and rank and file organised around a specific political line and ideological
outlook. The conscious leadership, centred in the labour bureaucracy,
represents the sectoral interests of the labour aristocracy and its specific
sections, not merely the interests of the bureaucracy. The labour aristocracy
includes significant sections of the rank and file. The objective position
of these workers is expressed, subjectively, in political support for
opportunist leaders and their policies.29

The labour bureaucracy is dependent on the labour aristocracy, even while
it leads the stratum. It works to prevent the organisations of the labour
aristocracy joining with other sections of workers in common class-struggle
movements which transform partial struggles for reforms into revolutionary
conflicts.30

The relationship, therefore, is fundamentally one of political influence.
It is observed more readily with regard to the totality of the labour
bureaucracy, beyond the hierarchies of the membership organisations of
the working class such as the unions—that is, inclusive of its parliamentarians
and party officials, labour lawyers and intellectuals associated with
the labour or other social movements.

The labour apparatus and the labour bureaucracy

An argument that the labour bureaucracy is the social basis of opportunism
is counterposed to the theory of the labour aristocracy. This generally
contrasts the labour bureaucracy's traits—a willingness to compromise
and a commitment to what Antonio Gramsci called "industrial legality"
and the preservation of the movement's organisations above the pursuit
of the movement's aims—to those of the rank and file of the labour
movement, who are understood to have an interest in opposing compromises
and to be powerful through industrial action.31

John Kelly surveyed much of the international discussion of this argument,
suggesting it had sources in the Marxist tradition, in particular in the
work of Lenin and of Trotsky.32 O'Lincoln cited writings by
Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci to support his view that only the union
bureaucracy is a protagonist of reformist activity as a result of its
social position.33 Tom Bramble provided a significant example
of the argument applied to Australia.34 A 1983 resolution of
the Socialist Workers Party in Australia said, while referring to the
labour aristocracy as the "primary social base for the entrenched
bureaucracies that control most unions", that the bureaucracy is
"the fundamental obstacle to consistent class struggle by
the unions".35

The argument that the labour bureaucracy is the source of opportunism
offers two explanations for the bureaucratisation of the labour movement
apparatus in addition to that of the theory of the labour aristocracy.
The apparatus personnel's practice—their mediation between labour
and capital—creates an interest for them in continual negotiation
about the terms of workers' exploitation.36 Also, unions and
the parties expressing their politics "are institutions firmly located
on the terrain of capitalism, devoted to improving the terms on which
labour-power is sold within the existing class system rather than striving
to transform it":37 within bargaining institutions dominated
by capital, the negotiating process reproduces the relation of labour's
subjection to capital and promotes compromise.38

The two explanations can be related. According to Bramble, the institutional
limitation of unions and their parties is the context for the constitution
of their officials as a vacillating "conservatising layer".
Sometimes—least of all among those most remote from the rank and
file—the officials lead militant struggles, to resist or waylay anti-union
measures, a loss of membership or the development of rank-and-file opposition.
They restrain such struggles from challenging the social order, however.39

In the argument that the labour bureaucracy is the social basis of opportunism,
there disappear the various resolutions of the contradiction in workers'
organising, between the promotion of the working class's collective action
and understanding and the restrictions by conditions on the workers' organisations
and their functionaries. The labour apparatus becomes an invariant—that
is, invariably bureaucratic—category.40

"Differences in political socialisation", Kelly noted, for
example, are "disregarded or downgraded in any explanation of the
behaviour of union officials" in this discussion of the labour bureaucracy.41
Like him, the Marxists who were claimed as sources for the labour bureaucratic
explanation of opportunism were concerned about the role political interventions
could play. They sought to secure revolutionary challenges to capitalism
in the work of union and party officials.

From 1912 to 1914, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, tried to impart a revolutionary
approach to the activity of their Duma members and the union governing
boards they controlled.42 Luxemburg argued that the bureaucratism
of German social democratic union officials could be overcome by "rejoining
the trade unions to [revolutionary] social democracy" because, she
believed, the mass of proletarians had been won to the social democratic
view of the class struggle and understood the union movement to be part
of that.43 Trotsky could treat the task more or less as given:
"the sections of the Fourth International should always strive not
only to renew the top leadership of the unions, boldly and resolutely
in critical moments advancing new militant leaders in place of routine
functionaries and careerists …"44

Gramsci did advocate that revolutionaries work in the factory committees,
rather than the unions, in Italy in 1919-20.45 This was a minority
view in the Communist International (CI) at the time, which instead considered
that each form of workers' organisation had a specific role in the historical
development of the social revolution: therefore, "Communists in all
countries must join the unions in order to develop them into bodies consciously
struggling for the overthrow of capitalism".46 By the
time he became the leader of the Italian Communist Party, in 1923, he
had adopted the CI position, while continuing to argue that in Italy activity
in the factory committees had special significance because fascist repression
had been directed at the unions first.47 His later prison writings
upheld the idea that the party could direct political activity: "The
problem must be posed in the following terms: every member of the party,
whatever his position or his responsibilities, is still a member of the
party and subordinate to its leadership. There cannot be subordination
between union and party: if the union has spontaneously chosen as its
leader a member of the party, that means that the union freely accepts
(indeed desires) control by the party over its officials."48

The argument that the labour bureaucracy is the social basis of opportunism
also ignores the influence of different historical conditions on the character
of political approaches. For example, O'Lincoln asserted: "As to
the flow-over of trade union into political organisation, it was true
that the working class movement produced political parties across Europe.
But they took on finished form as reformist parties, trapped within
the logic of capitalism just as the unions were."49

O'Lincoln claimed "this tendency, too, was clear in Marx and Engels'
day",50 but it wasn't. His concern with the "finished
form" of the social democratic parties avoided a discussion of how
they arrived there. In particular, the German Social Democratic Party
(SPD), the most influential, radicalised in the 1880s. The party's
new program, adopted at Erfurt in 1891, did continue to accommodate revolutionary
and reformist elements that were not yet clearly differentiated together
in the one organisation:51 it achieved this by "lack[ing]
precisely what should have been said", as Engels put it,52
which Lenin later pointed out was discussion of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.53 Nevertheless, in a context where there was no
labour aristocracy that could be a root for opportunism within, rather
than alien from, the working class, this was what Marxists understood
to be the composition of the proletarian party, in which the revolutionary
element would predominate.

Marxists continued for some time to uphold the view that their parties
should include all who proclaimed themselves adherents of Marxism, even
open reformists.54 Before 1914, the struggle against opportunism
in the working-class movement separated the revolutionary and opportunist
elements into distinct parties only in Russia.55 After 1914,
Lenin changed his view about what sort of Marxism could be included in
the revolutionary party, but he historically limited his criticism of
the previous perspective. He said the inclusive party "has outlived
itself"56 and "the old theory that opportunism is
a `legitimate shade' in a single party that knows no `extremes' has
now turned into … a tremendous hindrance to the working-class
movement".57 The theory of the labour aristocracy, unlike
the argument that the labour bureaucracy is the social basis of opportunism,
accounts for this change through the consolidation of the domination of
monopolising capitals, their superprofits, the relative privileges these
could then sustain for a stratum of the working class and the possibility
this opened up for collaboration between that stratum and the bourgeoisie.

The labour aristocracy and the labour bureaucracy

Kelly also considered that the range of policies and actions of union
leaderships, and the varied reactions of union members to campaigns, including
rebuffs of leadership calls for action, contradict the category of the
labour bureaucracy as the explanation of opportunism. He argued that this
theory, because it plays up the impact of struggle on workers' ideas,
while remaining silent about workers' interest in higher incomes and better
working conditions and social amenities under capitalism, and, also, the
impact of struggle on officials, overestimates both workers' radicalisation
through industrial action which does not become politicised, and leadership
conservatism.58

Kelly suggested an alternative account. The threat of organised
workers' industrial power secures agreements. Exercise of this power must
be prevented once agreements have been reached, however. So, in the unions,
preservation of organisation and short-term objectives, compatible with
existing economic and political arrangements, are emphasised. Crises in
employers' profitability and changes in government erode the external
support for this emphasis. The unions are forced to rely again on their
membership and its mobilisation. The result is historical variation in
the role of officials.59

The carrying over of opportunist politics from circumstances of stability
into those of crisis by a section of officials—the labour bureaucracy—confronts
Kelly's account. These officials' consciousness is prepared by the peaceful
tempo of events. They are convinced they best understand and have the
strongest commitment to workers' interests.60 The material
interests of the working class as a whole, including even the labour aristocracy,
exert no influence on this consciousness. Its development or retardation
is tied to the officials' broader politics.61

O'Lincoln suggested that the reason workers continue to follow opportunist
leaders must be considered.62 The core of the argument that
the labour bureaucracy is the social basis of opportunism is that bargaining
by workers' organisations enforces an accommodation with capital and subordinates
the proletarian class struggle. From this point of view, "any agreement
… must to a degree be at the expense of workers". However, the
balance of forces in a struggle between labour and capital could enforce
a compromise on workers: that compromise would then be legitimate and
a victory of sorts for the workers.63 What is at stake when
workers make an agreement is whether or not they remain ready to carry
on the class struggle or have retreated from it.64 Contrary
to claims by Kelly, the CI understanding that collective agreements are
only temporary cessations of open class conflict, because it doesn't refuse
compromises, resembles the latter perspective, not the former.65

Officials' actions can't explain a mass retreat from the class struggle,
even when this occurs through these actions. They don't show "how
it came to pass that the `people' allowed themselves to be thus betrayed".66
Instead, the theory of the labour aristocracy proposes that the material
interests, historical experience and political formation of the working
class and its different sections would be the basis of any explanation.
Among the labour aristocrats, it finds a tendency to put aside the historical
interests of the working class in favour of the collaboration with monopolising
capitals needed to secure their relative privilege.

The labour bureaucracy might be displaced from the labour movement apparatus,
of course. Kelly's account can be interpreted in this way.

The argument that the labour bureaucracy is the source of opportunism,
however, cannot ascertain the characteristics of the development of a
class-struggle alternative to the labour bureaucracy. If workers are not
militant, the labour bureaucracy commands. For example, Bramble partly
explains the acceptance of a social contract (the Accords) by many union
militants in Australia from 1983 to 1996 by the collapse in 1982 of working-class
militancy as a possible alternative to the union officials and the subsequent
crackdown by officials on any threat of rank-and-file action.67
If workers are militant, the possibility is not considered that their
discord with the labour bureaucracy reflects disenchantment with the ability
of a particular leadership to pursue, not common class interest, but aristocratic
privileges. "Militancy" is abstractly hailed—"the
problem of bureaucracy must be set against the continuing pattern
of rank and file activity … including dissent against and resistance
to official policies", Bramble wrote elsewhere68—without
a critical assessment of what that activity amounts to or the struggle
needed to develop it into political class action and consciousness.69
Indeed, radical leaderships and working-class activity appear to exist
separately, the latter unchanging until the former develops: "In
the absence of revolutionary organisations sizeable enough and politically
effective enough to contend for leadership in the working class, rank
and file workers will quite understandably continue to look for reformist
solutions", Dianne Fieldes wrote.70

In contrast, Lenin wrote: "We are waging a struggle against the
`labour aristocracy' in the name of the masses of the workers and in order
to win them over to our side; we are waging the struggle against the opportunist
and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to
our side."71 The theory of the labour aristocracy suggests
that not only "the logic of capitalism"—the condition of
all working-class politics—but also the transformation of capitalism
by the consolidation of the domination of monopolising capitals, have
been the conditions for opportunism and the struggle against it in the
working-class movement, including in its apparatus.

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The labour aristocracy and the `lower strata'
of the working class

The relationship between the labour aristocracy and the other strata
of the working class also develops under the conditions of monopoly capitalism.
The alliance of the labour aristocracy with the bourgeoisie, in which
the stratum defends its privileges, the stratifications of the working
class, the political institutions of capitalist class rule and the idea
of the harmony of interest between labour and capital, puts it in an antagonistic
position to the proletariat as a class and to the mass of the class who
do not benefit from its relative privileges.72 Robert Clough
suggested, in particular, that the labour aristocracy undermines the spontaneous
movement of the workers, the basis for their acquisition of a political
class consciousness, "through its control of the organisation of
the working class, its privileged access to resources such as finance,
the media, meeting halls and so on".73 The labour aristocracy
may deny solidarity to working-class resistance. Alternatively, it may
subordinate the spontaneous movement to itself or even subsume the movement.

The course of the movement for the organisation of mass production workers
in the us from 1933 to 1950 is an important example of these variations
in the forms of interaction in the relationship between the labour aristocracy
and other strata of the working class. This movement, according to Mike
Davis, began from a concern for rank-and-file power in the workplace and
culminated in the 1936-37 sit-down strike wave. It mobilised the second-generation
immigrants and was led by groups of radical political cadres and syndicalist
skilled workers. It organised, against the opposition of the American
Federation of Labor, in shop committees, city-wide organisations and industrial
unions, which, together with unions alienated by the AFL, would form the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (cio). Yet the weight of resources
possessed by the leaderships of the older unions favoured a reduction
in rank-and-file direction of the unions in the new federation. After
1937, the AFL reasserted its position, building on a solid base in "the
relative conservatism of its predominantly skilled, native-Protestant
and `old immigrant' membership",74 through collaboration
with employers or a militancy limited to members' sectoral concerns. When
the cio did regain the initiative, after 1941, the general dominant position
internationally of us capital was established and working-class identity
was reforged by wartime nationalism, which included all whites while maintaining
anti-black racism. A massive postwar strike wave institutionalised collective
bargaining along with the restoration of managerial control. There was
also no successful attempt to organise the labour movement for independent
political action: instead, most of the left became among the most zealous
promoters of the new nationalism, before being defeated in a "civil
war" within the cio in which the right had the backing of laws opposing
radicals and suppressing labour solidarity.75

"In fact", Elbaum and Seltzer pointed out, "for extended
periods the labour aristocracy has been able to exercise political leadership
over the entire working class", bringing to the fore the influence,
not the antagonism, of the stratum with regard to the rest of the class.76
Large sections of the working class, including the oppressed strata, when
they have no independent means of collective expression of their own,
accept the representation of their interests by the labour aristocracy,
which, because it tends to include the more stably organised workers,
emerges as the "natural" voice of the working class. The partial
extension to broader layers of the working class of some of the stratum's
privileges and the coincidences of interests among the labour aristocracy
and parts of other working-class strata arising from other stratifications
both support this influence.77

The influence of the labour aristocracy—that is, of opportunism,
and, through it, of the bourgeoisie—in the working class as a whole
is the stratum's important political feature. Lenin commented that this
"serves the bourgeoisie splendidly, and serves it precisely among
the workers, brings its influence precisely to the proletariat,
to where the bourgeoisie needs it most and where it finds it most difficult
to subject the masses morally".78

Opportunism and preparation of the proletariat
for revolution

As Elbaum and Seltzer noted, "the complex and shifting relationship
of the labour aristocracy to the lower strata of the working class is
an axis around which much of the `politics' within the workers' movement
oscillates". 79 Such changes in the politics of the workers'
movement bring forth the various forms of opportunism. Liberal-labour
politics was counterposed to social democracy's combination of reformist
and revolutionary perspectives about the struggle for working-class power.
Later, the opportunist and revolutionary wings of social democracy were
counterposed.

In neither case was the contrast absolute in appearance, however. Lenin
referred, for example, to the remarks of a German opportunist about the
spd: "It must preserve its character as a labour party with socialist
ideals; for the day it gives this up a new party will arise and adopt
the program the old party had disavowed, giving it a still more radical
formulation". This, Lenin said, represented the view of "frank,
crude, [and] cynical" opportunism about the need for "phrases
with a revolutionary ring to deceive the masses".

Lenin considered the opportunists who "act with stealth, subtlety
and `honesty'" a greater danger, however. Karl Kautsky, who, Lenin
argued, was the chief proponent of this form of opportunism, had stated
that the spd "is splitting up into two extreme camps which have nothing
in common", but wanted, Lenin said, "to use a few radical parliamentary
speeches to reconcile the revolutionary masses with the opportunists"
and to raise "hopes that the future International will surely
be revolutionary … for the sole purpose of protecting, camouflaging
and prettifying the present domination of the counter-revolutionary
element". Lenin sarcastically asked: "Is it not obvious that
`unity' with [the opportunist Carl] Legien and Co. is the best means of
preparing the `future' revolutionary International?"80

The historical experience of the crisis in the workers' movement when
the first world war began, according to Lenin, suggested otherwise. Opportunism
was "no chance occurrence … but a social product of an entire
period of history".81 In the struggle against opportunism,
the working class had needed to use this period "of political stagnation
or of sluggish, so-called `peaceful' development in order to develop [its]
class-consciousness, strength and militancy … towards the `ultimate
aim' of that class' advance, towards creating in it the ability to find
practical solutions for great tasks in the great days".82

Lenin emphasised that the working class's political activity should combine
taking advantage of all legal opportunities with preparing for and when
necessary adopting illegal methods of work, through, for example "illegal
and revolutionary parliamentarism":83 revolutionary
organisations should, he said, "know how not to confine themselves
to legality", be "capable of safeguarding themselves against
opportunist treachery" and be " organisations of a proletariat
that is beginning a `struggle for power', a struggle for the overthrow
of the bourgeoisie".84 This was how German social democracy
had operated under the 1878-90 anti-socialist laws. Later only its revolutionary
wing would act in this way, such as in Karl Liebknecht's work against
his own country's militarism and war effort as a youth organisation leader
and parliamentarian. This was carried out in violation of the spd's discipline.85

The "pure legalism, the legalism-and-nothing-but-legalism"
of the social democratic parties in the first decades of the twentieth
century, on the other hand, nurtured opportunism and "become the
foundation for a bourgeois labour policy", Lenin said.86
He noted the principal role of legal mass organisations of the working
class for the parties, especially in Germany, and the certainty these
organisations would be suppressed if they initiated revolutionary action.
He said that, in reaction to this situation, "the old party—from
Legien to Kautsky inclusively—sacrificed the revolutionary aims of
the proletariat for the sake of preserving the present legal organisations
… People are so degraded and stultified by bourgeois legality that
they cannot even conceive of the need for organisations of another
kind, illegal organisations for the purpose of guiding the revolutionary
struggle."87 Nothing else could be done legally in any
crisis, he argued: practically, the opportunists in the organisations
could betray any action, and, more fundamentally, the opportunists were
powerful because of the support they received from the capitalists and
their state.88

Lenin contrasted his view to what he considered "`official optimism'
… optimism in respect of opportunism", which rejected breaking
away from what it understood to be the masses and mass organisations.89
He pointed out that the existing organisations organised only a minority,
generally from the relatively privileged strata, of the working class:
he, who considered "genuine organisation" in the working-class
struggle against the bourgeoisie to be flexible and single-willed, capable
of changing form in accordance with whether or not there was a revolutionary
situation,90 said "no one can seriously think it is possible
to organise the majority of the proletariat under capitalism".91
And: "Secondly—and this is the main point—it is not so
much a question of the size of an organisation, as of the real, objective
significance of its policy: does its policy represent the masses, does
it serve them, i.e., does it aim at their liberation from capitalism,
or does it represent the interests of the minority, the minority's reconciliation
with capitalism?"92

The legal working-class organisations, Lenin answered, on one of the
many occasions he addressed this question, were "in the grip of opportunism",
which was constituted by "an entire social stratum, consisting of
parliamentarians, journalists, labour officials, privileged office personnel,
and certain strata of the proletariat, [which] has sprung up and has become
amalgamated with its own national bourgeoisie, which has proved
fully capable of appreciating it and `adapting' it".93
The task of Marxist tactics, he said, then became to expose "the
fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying
and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary
privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of
bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents
of the bourgeoisie", in order to "teach the masses to appreciate
their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution
through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and
imperialist armistices".94

Later Lenin would write that, without a struggle against the labour aristocracy,
"without the destruction of every trace of its prestige among the
workers, without convincing the masses of the utter bourgeois corruption
of this stratum, there can be no question of a serious communist workers'
movement".95 The conclusion Lenin drew in his draft theses
for the second congress of the Comintern on its fundamental tasks was:

One of the chief causes hampering the revolutionary working-class
movement in the developed capitalist countries is the fact that …
the capitalists of these countries have been able to create a relatively
larger and more stable labour aristocracy … [which] forms the real
social pillar of the Second International, of the reformists and the `Centrists';
at present it might even be called the social mainstay of the bourgeoisie.
No preparation of the proletariat for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie
is possible, even in the preliminary sense, unless an immediate, systematic,
extensive and open struggle is waged against this stratum …96

Proletarian tactics under the domination of
monopolising capitals

Lenin's discussion of the struggle against the influence of the labour
aristocracy as a stratum in the working class emphasised two issues, the
orientation socialists should have towards the different strata of the
working class and how to create the political organisation to carry this
out.

Lenin claimed:

Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion
of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists
and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will
be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution.

He was "certain", however, that opportunism represented only
the privileged strata of the class: "it is therefore our duty, if
we wish to remain socialists, to go down lower and deeper, to the
real masses". Appealing to the lower strata of the class "is
the essence of Marxist tactics", he said emphatically.97

Subsequently, Lenin advocated this orientation in the CI: he noted, when
discussing, in his draft theses for the second congress, how the Communist
parties should effect the slogan of "closer links to the masses",
that "the masses" meant "particularly those who are least
organised and educated, who are most oppressed and least amenable to organisation".
Then, to suggest the approach to achieve this, he drew on the experience
in Russia: "The proletariat becomes revolutionary only insofar as
it does not restrict itself to the narrow framework of craft interests,
only when in all matters and spheres of public life, it acts as the leader
of all the toiling and exploiting masses".98

In 1920, when Lenin wrote these draft theses, union membership and strike
activity in Europe had been growing rapidly.99 Broad sections
of the mass of workers were newly taking part in the labour movement.
He called for "all-round and unstinted support especially to the
spontaneous and mass strike movement".100

The upsurge in struggle stopped within a year, however. This was partly
because the end of the short postwar boom led to a dramatic rise in unemployment.
The third Comintern congress resolution on tactics, drafted by the Russian
delegation, contrasted the opportunists' view, which regarded the unemployed
as objects of state and trade union charity, with the understanding that
the unemployed represented a revolutionary factor which could be organised
for mass action and, by exerting pressure for and supporting action by
the various sections of the proletariat, extend the scope of the class
struggle:

By actively defending this layer of the working class, by supporting
the most oppressed section of the proletariat, the Communist Parties are
not championing one layer of the workers at the expense of others, but
are furthering the interests of the working class as a whole. This the
counter-revolutionary leaders have failed to do, preferring to advance
the temporary interests of the labour aristocracy … Those who promote
the interests of the labour aristocracy, either counterposing or simply
ignoring the interests of the unemployed, destroy the unity of the working
classes and are pursuing a policy that has counter-revolutionary consequences.
The Communist Party, as the representative of the interests of the working
class as a whole, cannot merely recognise these common interests verbally
and argue for them in its propaganda. It can only effectively represent
these interests if it disregards the opposition of the labour aristocracy
and, when opportunities arise, leads the most oppressed and downtrodden
workers into action.101

Lenin's draft theses also proposed that Comintern parties exclude those
who publicly opposed strikes or "betray[ed] the workers by using
the experience of strikes to teach them reformism, and not revolution".102
This continued a theme he took up from the time he first developed the
theory of the labour aristocracy, that "the epoch of imperialism
cannot permit the existence, in a single party, of the revolutionary proletariat's
vanguard and the semi-petty-bourgeois aristocracy of the working class",103
although the earlier variation of this theme was that opportunism was
a "bourgeois abscess" to be expelled.104

Elbaum and Seltzer pointed out, "these general tactical guidelines
were elaborated by Lenin in … polemics with the `centrists' and `left'
opportunists in the period 1914 to 1920".105 The "left
Communist" interpretation of these guidelines as a call for revolutionaries
not to compromise, however, was also a target of polemics by Lenin, Trotsky
and others. Among other things, they argued that involvement in parliaments
and "reactionary" trade unions, some electoral support for opportunists
("as the rope supports the hanged man … [to] hasten the political
death") and proposals for united fronts of all workers, regardless
of their political alignments, in common struggles to defend the immediate
interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie are necessary when
the majority of the working class is led by opportunists.106
They were concerned with workers gaining experience in struggle, a rise
in the general level of political class consciousness among workers and
bringing the overwhelming majority of the class under revolutionary socialist
influence.107

The polemics against left communism did not abandon the guidelines developed
earlier, however. For example, Trotsky was simply reiterating the view
of ci resolutions about the united front tactic when he wrote that the
revolutionary party could fight to win a majority of the working class
only "by remaining an absolutely independent organisation with a
clear program and strict internal discipline. That is the reason why the
party was bound to break ideologically and organisationally with the reformists
and the centrists."108 Lenin's injunction that Communists
"must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found"109
needs to be considered together with his warnings against optimism that
objective conditions guarantee the unity of the working class on a revolutionary
basis and about the persistence of opportunism.110 As Elbaum
and Seltzer noted, changes in objective conditions do not by themselves
break the hold of opportunism, since the pressure on sectoral interests
in periods of economic decline can encourage workers either to reject
these in favour of class-wide interests or fight harder to retain them.

The continuity of tactics was underpinned by theoretical outlook and
political perspective. As Lenin reported to the second Comintern congress:

Opportunism in the upper ranks of the working-class movement
is bourgeois socialism, not proletarian socialism. It has been shown in
practice that working-class activists who follow the opportunist trend
are better defenders of the bourgeoisie than the bourgeois themselves
… This is where our principal enemy is, an enemy we must overcome
… That is our main task.111

Elbaum and Seltzer summarised these considerations:

In general, Lenin argued that in periods in which the labour
aristocracy is firmly entrenched in [the] leadership of the mass organisations
of the working class, particularly the trade unions, a correct tactical
line must emphasise political work in the lower strata of the working
class, among the unorganised and those whose conditions of life provide
less basis to foster bourgeois illusions. In periods in which new forces
from the lower strata are entering the established mass organisations,
or in which objective conditions are constricting the labour aristocracy's
role and influence within them, correct tactics must focus on isolating
the labour aristocracy and sharpening the struggle against opportunism
within the reactionary-led bodies. In all periods, political work must
continue wherever the masses are concentrated, including painstaking,
patient, and at times dangerous work in those organisations dominated
by the labour aristocracy and opportunism (in order to be positioned to
take advantage of the rank and file's discontent when conditions change).

… But a communist movement whose orientation to the revolutionary
training of the proletariat is concentrated exclusively or even principally
on the organised trade union movement at the expense of its work among
the non-organised, lower strata is already embarking on an opportunist
course … [Lenin calls on] communists to struggle, in the
trade unions, against the labour aristocracy and its opportunist line.
The political objective is to strengthen the class consciousness and
fighting capacity of the workers in the process of defeating the influence
of the opportunist trend.112

The labour aristocracy as the social base for
opportunism

Because labour aristocrats can be politically class conscious, the class
is not absolutely politically differentiated according to position within
the aristocratic stratification. This leads to criticisms that the attribution
by the theory of the labour aristocracy of the social base of opportunism
to the stratum is not empirically verified.

A.J. Polan argued, for example:

Lenin's appreciation of the politics of the higher paid worker
was an inversion of the truth. Clearly, ideas of respectability and conservatism
could very easily flow from social stability and, more specifically, from
the craftsman's elevated role in production. But very often situations
of crisis or structural change produced among such people a fabric of
consciousness that made them extremely and uniquely amenable to radical
ideas. The experience of the communist parties after the [First World
War] testifies to this. In most parties, workers from the skilled trades
constituted the largest single elements of the membership, and if one
considers the relatively small size of those groups in the working class
as a whole, the attraction of communist politics for such people is clearly
markedly stronger than among unskilled workers.113

Concessions of more favourable conditions for workers' struggle against
capital are what determine the composition of the labour aristocracy,
however. Therefore, the stratum's members will tend to be represented
in any party composed of workers in disproportionately greater
numbers than in the class as a whole. They can more readily pursue their
sectoral interests than other parts of the class, if they wish, but whether
or not they do so is the outcome of political struggle. The role in the
1905 Russian Revolution of the metalworkers—the best paid workers,
but also the "vanguard of the proletariat … the finest elements
of the working class"—was one they played, Lenin explained,
because they did not "regard the class struggle as a struggle in
the interests of a thin upper stratum—a conception the reformists
all too often try to instil", but instead recognised the need "for
the proletariat to come forward as the real vanguard of the majority of
the exploited and draw that majority into the struggle",114
which was an outlook, he had argued, made possible only by revolutionaries
assuming an active role in workers' political education.115

Orientation by a party to the lower strata of the working class can significantly
influence its composition, however. Polan's example of the membership
of the German Communist Party in 1927, in which skilled workers were forty
per cent and unskilled workers twenty-eight per cent, with the remainder
made up of agricultural labourers, independent craftspeople and commercial
employees,116 can be compared with the figures for the spd
branches surveyed twenty years earlier: the proportion of skilled workers
was halved and the proportion of unskilled workers doubled,117
so the former no longer totally dominated and the latter need not have
been marginalised.

The obverse argument to Polan's refers to support, especially in votes,
for opportunist parties among the lower strata of the working class. It
argues that these parties therefore remain, in some sense, proletarian.

The amount of support of the lower strata of the working class for opportunism
is irrelevant to an analysis of the fundamental political character
of the opportunist parties, however, because the support is not based
on any historic common interest, not even of a particular capitalist epoch,
like the benefits the labour aristocracy obtains from monopolising capitals,
and, therefore, is more or less conjunctural. Lenin, in a contribution
in support of the affiliation of the British Communist Party to the Labour
Party in the ci discussion, criticised a description of the Labour Party
as the "political expression of the workers organised in trade unions".118
He pointed out:

Of course, most of the Labour Party's members are workers.
However, whether or not a party is really a political party of the workers
does not depend solely on whether its members are workers but also on
who leads it and the content of its actions and its political tactics.
Only the latter determines whether we really have before us a political
party of the proletariat. Regarded from this point of view, the only correct
one, the Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although
made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of
reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie.
It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically
dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns.119

The empirical argument against the theory of the labour aristocracy also
ignores the influence of the various class-collaboration ways in which
the labour aristocracy pursues its interests on the kind of support workers
from the lower strata offer opportunism. These workers are very often
not involved in politics at all: partial prohibition of political abstention
by the state, as with regimes of compulsory voting, may hide a lack of
other forms of political participation by workers. The adoption by the
labour aristocracy of the liberal organisational form of an opportunist
group within an existing capitalist party can condition workers' political
activity. Davis noted:

In no other capitalist country is mass political abstentionism
as fully developed as in the United States, where a "silent majority"
of the working class has sat out more than half the elections of the last
century. Arguably this mute, atomised protest is the historical correlative
of the striking absence of an independent political party of the proletariat
…120

The policy of the labour aristocracy may also have a similar influence.
Clough correlated increased electoral abstention in Britain by black and
Irish workers in the 1970s and 1980s to how the Labour Party and the union
movement adapted to the increasing individualism of a labour aristocracy
undergoing reformation in its benefits and composition, and dropped any
pretence of defending the poorer sections of the working class.121

The combination by the labour aristocracy of a separate political organisation
and a more collectivist social democratic policy might encourage more
political involvement by the lower strata of the working class. The premises
of the labour aristocracy's pursuit of its interests—the maintenance
and extension of the labour aristocracy, against the immediate interests
of the monopolising capitals, from whom the stratum demands benefits supported
by monopoly superprofits, and the undermining of class-struggle politics
in the working-class movement, against the historic interests of the working
class—limit this potential, however. The labour aristocracy's separate
political organisation arises from a view within the stratum that its
action independent of the capitalist class or various sections of that
class, including mobilisation of various strata of the working class,
can most effectively express its particular interests within its alliance
with the capitalist class. It binds the lower strata of the working class
to itself not in their interests, but in its own, and, therefore, to class
collaboration.

The phenomenon of poorer workers proving to be among the most solid supporters
of the opportunists misleads even some protagonists of the theory of the
labour aristocracy. Clough said the appeals of the Labour Party to these
strata were necessary, beyond the "piling up the votes of the poor
working class", for the party's electoral victory, as if that consideration,
rather than an expression of the interests of the labour aristocracy,
determined the policy of the opportunists.122 Also, he presented
the actions of the British Labour Party and unions as "the increasing
separation of the Party from the mass of the working class"123
and "the unions … reverting much to what they were at the turn
of the century, embracing only a minority of the working class …
because they cannot unite the interests of all sections of the working
class as they could in the 1960s and 1970s".124 These
characterisations are examples of a failure to account for the extent
to which working-class unity in action involves the extension of the labour
aristocracy and of its influence in the working class, against which revolutionary
socialists must struggle, when monopolising capitals are relatively prosperous
and stable, and the development of a class-struggle wing in the proletarian
movement, which the opportunists set out to destroy, in capitalist crises.125

The possibility of favourable conditions for the predominance of either
the opportunist or revolutionary trends in the working-class movement
should not be taken to indicate comparable conditions for existence of
the two trends. The existence of the labour aristocracy and its political
expression in "bourgeois labour parties" is inevitable in relation
to the consolidation of the domination of monopolising capitals. The revolutionary
proletariat can create itself only under suitable conditions, by the adoption
of correct tactics, and through a commitment to the task. Guiding this
will be "the only Marxist line in the world labour movement",
as Lenin called it, "to explain to the masses the inevitability and
necessity of breaking with opportunism, to educate them for revolution
by waging a relentless struggle against opportunism … to expose,
not conceal, the utter vileness of national-liberal labour politics".126

Notes

2. The first article in the series, "Engels and
the theory of the labour aristocracy", appeared in Links No.
25, January-June, 2004, pp. 116-134. It considered the scope and significance
of the theory and its application by Engels to understanding the politics
of the English working class in the latter half of the 19th century. The
second article, "Monopoly capitalism and the bribery of the labour
aristocracy", appeared in Links No. 26, July-December 2004,
pp. 46-63. It began the discussion of Lenin's development of the theory
and the controversies which surround the theory, considering those concerned
with the source and nature of the "bribe" to the labour aristocracy.

3. Max Elbaum and Robert Seltzer, "The labor aristocracy:
the material basis for opportunism in the labor movement—part I:
the theory of the labor aristocracy", Line of March, May-June
1982, pp. 94-96.

4. Lenin, op. cit., pp. 133-34.

5. Tony Cliff, "Economic roots of reformism",
<http://www.marxist.org/archive/cliff/1957/06/rootsref.htm>. M.E.
Howard and J.E. King, A History of Marxian Economics: Volume I, 1883-1929,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1989, p. 260. The authors proceed
on different bases, however: Cliff attributes to the impact of monopoly
capitalism only a temporary "general economic prosperity", while
Howard and King see the problem "in the assertion that only a minority
of the labour movement was deeply affected … and in the presumption
that the revolutionary integrity of the proletarian mass was unchanged".

10. ibid., pp. 94-95; Max Elbaum and Robert Seltzer,
"The labor aristocracy: the material basis for opportunism in the
labor movement—part II: the US labor movement since World War II",
Line of March, Sept-Oct 1982, p. 91.

27. Zinoviev, op. cit., p. 482. The proximity
of two categories encourages the confusion of them, especially when there
are examples of errors in the use of the terms (for example, see ibid.,
p. 481) and Lenin, as Elbaum and Seltzer explained "sometimes use[d]
`labour aristocracy' as if it describes the opportunist political trend
in the workers' movement" and, moreover, personified this by reference
to leaders of the trend, thus identifying it with the labour bureaucracy.
Here, as in Elbaum and Seltzer, and following the main thrust of Lenin's
discussion, "labour aristocracy" means "the objectively
privileged upper strata of the working class" ("The labor aristocracy
… part I", p. 79 n).

35. SWP, Revolutionary Strategy and Tactics in the
Trade Unions, pp. 9 and 11. At this time, the SWP considered the Australian
Labor Party a "bourgeois workers' party" (p. 4), contrasting
its organisational form, "the party of the trade unions", with
the bourgeois content of its program and action, which "is the political
expression of the union bureaucracy" (p. 43). It said: "Revolutionary
propaganda therefore argues for union involvement in and control of the
activities of the Labor Party … to change it from a political instrument
of the union bureaucracy to a political instrument of proletarian militants".
(p. 44). In 1986, the SWP resolved instead that "the ALP is a liberal
bourgeois party" fundamentally characterised by its program and confined
by this within the limits set by capitalist property relations ("the ALP and the fight for socialism", in Labor and the Fight for Socialism,
2nd ed, New Course, Sydney, 1988, p. 11). It continued: "The fight
to transform the unions [into class-struggle instruments] will not be
successful so long as the majority of the organised working class remains
politically imprisoned by Labor reformism ... the liberation of the unions
from [the] bureaucracy's control will confront militant unionists with
the need to break with the ALP and build a new political instrument"
(ibid., p. 31). Subsequently, the program of the DSP referred to
the labour bureaucracy as the "main obstacle" to the transformation
of the unions (DSP, Program of the Democratic Socialist Party,
2nd ed., New Course Publications, Sydney, 1994, pp. 74-75).

44. Leon Trotsky, "The death agony of capitalism
and the tasks of the Fourth International", in Leon Trotsky, The
Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution, Pathfinder Press, New
York, 1977, p. 118.

49. O'Lincoln, op. cit. This formulation allows
O'Lincoln to ignore the role played by these parties' socialist political
education and experience in the later formation of the Bolsheviks and
then the Communist parties. An example of this was noted by Lenin: "German
revolutionary Social-Democracy … came closest to being
the party the revolutionary proletariat needs … of all the Western
parties, [it] produced the finest leaders, and recovered and gained new
strength more rapidly" (`Left-wing' communism, p. 40).

53. Lenin, "The second congress of the Communist
International", pp. 246-47.

54. Doug Lorimer, "The Bolshevik party and `Zinovievism':
comments on a caricature of Leninism", Links, No. 24, Sep-Dec
2003, p. 105. For examples of how Lenin upheld this position, see V.I.
Lenin, "Conference of the extended editorial board of Proletary"
(LCW, Vol. 15, 1977, p. 430) and V.I. Lenin, "In Australia",
where he contrasted the Labour Party of Britain, "an alliance
between the non-socialist trade unions and the extremely opportunist Independent
Labour Party", and the Australian Labor Party, the "unalloyed
representative of the non-socialist workers' trade unions"
(LCW, Vol 19, 1980, p. 217).

67. Tom Bramble, "Social democracy and the `failure'
of the Accord", in Kenneth Wilson, Joanne Bradford and Maree Fitzpatrick
(eds.), Australia in Accord: an Evaluation of the Prices and Incomes
Accord in the Hawke-Keating Years, South Pacific Publishing, Footscray,
2000, p. 258. Bramble polemicised that the social democrats he critiqued
never treat the working class as a subject (p. 262), but here he failed
to do this too.

96. V.I. Lenin, "Theses on the fundamental tasks
of the second congress of the Communist International", LCW,
Vol. 31, pp. 193-94.

97. Lenin, "Imperialism and the split in socialism",
pp. 135-36.

98. V.I. Lenin, "Theses", LCW, Vol.
31, p. 194.

99. See, for example: on British union membership and
strike activity, Kelly, op. cit., p. 102ff; on German union membership,
which declined only slightly until 1923, see G. Beier's calculation in
K.D. Ermann, Die Ziet Weltkreig, cited by John A. Moses, "The
concept of economic democracy within the German socialist trade unions
during the Weimar Republic", Labour History, No. 34, May 1978,
p. 45. 1920 was the year of the factory occupations in Italy and the general
strike in Germany against the Kapp putsch.

116. Polan, op. cit., p. 169n. Polan's example
of the 1929 Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain, at which
sixty-nine per cent of the delegates "were employed in coal, iron,
steel, engineering or shipbuilding—the `metals' that were the home
of the skilled worker" is immediately problematic, since the proportion
of "unskilled" coal miners, or unskilled workers generally,
among these delegates is unclear. Also, this CP, unlike the German one,
was not a mass party. His other example, of the great number of skilled
workers in this party's leadership, is flawed simply because many other
factors influence the formation of such groups.

117. Zinoviev, op. cit., p. 494.

118. John Riddell (ed.), Workers of the World and
Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress
[of the CI], 1920, Vol. 2, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1991, p. 736.
The speaker was William McLaine.

121. Robert Clough, Labour: a Party Fit for Imperialism,
Larkin Publications, London, 1992, part 6.

122. ibid., pp. 151-52, 165, 176.

123. ibid., p. 167.

124. ibid., p. 182.

125. Clough discusses this with regard to the 1984-85
British miners' strike (ibid., pp. 171-74). Their union did not
revert, however: it was more or less annihilated.

126. Lenin, "Imperialism and the split in socialism",
p. 136.

[Jonathan Strauss is a long-time member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective
in the Socialist Alliance of Australia. He is currently a postgraduate
student investigating developments in the working class and its consciousness
during the Hawke-Keating Labor governments, which ended in 1996.]